CUSTOMS

that's the title of an article at embrocation cycling journal that i didn't read until today because i assumed (as you likely did about the title of this post) that it was either some story about getting hassled by border officials over a bike box or about something precious like holiday cycling traditions in belgium compared to their vainly bastardized counterparts in bike town, u.s.a.

it turned out that "customs" was about a different kind of vanity entirely. "customs" refers neither to duty collections or to and specific set of established practices but to custom made bicycles. had i known that from the outset, i would have opened the article earlier. the author does, however, write about the custom of purchasing a custom bicycle, so his title, if perhaps confusing in its clumsiness (everyone missteps sometimes), is at least thoughtful. (and yes, we do plan to heed our own advice.)

the crux of "customs" is that customs are conspicuous luxury consumption, plain and simple -- even if the bikes themselves aren't. sure, a custom bicycle is custom fitted, but, "let’s face it, nearly everyone can be fit well on a stock bike." people buy custom bikes for the same reason that they buy custom anythings: they're pretty and just for you. as the owner of a custom bicycle, i've no hesitation in ceding that argument. unfortunately, the author treats the vanity of custom consumption in terms of a half-baked metaphysical conceit, as if having a bicycle made were essentially just the desire to consume beauty, by which activity a framebuilding "patron" is ultimately resigned to the vision and inspiration of an unknowable artist.

granted, i live in a town where every street kid and his dog builds bicycles, so i was able to engage my builder in person at every step of his process (we're extending the art metaphor). the author of "customs" gets his bikes in boxes that come in the mail. the red bike he gets in the article came from ellis cycles in wisconsin. (i don't know where the author lives.) it's "bolder" than his general tastes, but he accepts that a builder had seen something in him that he hadn't seen in himself -- something "bold, flashy, red." what? "it’s strange, but dave [of ellis cycles], along with a small number of the very best builders, is capable of expressing something about his customers without those customers making a single aesthetic decision." i hope that epiphany wasn't just veiled disappointment. customs are expensive.

and that's why i made sure to know exactly what my kid glove grey paint job would look like. and that's why i didn't listen when both the builder and the painter told me that it would wash out the white label on my downtube and contrast too little with my white components. if i'm going to be disappointed in anyone's artistic vision, it's going to be my own. then the art metaphor breaks down anyway, because inasmuch as any one bicycle is necessarily similar to the rest of them (pedal powered two wheeled transportation the lot), any recognizable dissimilarities that go beyond the requirements of function and riding style are decoration -- pop art and graphic design, where "vision" reduces just to sensibility. the "art" of customs lies in the technical craft of framebuilding, not in an eye for embellishment (sorry, edwin). saying otherwise is just simply to say that personally one has inferior taste.

ironically, the author of "customs" recognizes the importance of communication between customer and builder:

in the end, it’s trust and circumspection on the part of both parties that makes the arrangement possible. "how well does the builder know me, how well do I know myself, and...do we trust one another?"...basic questions concerning custom bikes that, i’m afraid, don’t get asked much.

i can't understand, then, why he seems to let the whole thing out of his hands. but again, "customs" isn't unthoughtful, and in its (somewhat convoluted) description of a bicycle as a metonym for its rider it did pique my curiosity as to the specific difference between metonymy and synecdoche (this site is amazing.) a lesson well learned. our metonym? just call me vanity.